The Planet of Lowe.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 49, Issue 14959, 10 July 1923, Page 6

The Planet of Lowe.

(Specially written to:

r “Daily Times’ - )

Earlv risers may have seen in the eastern sky, just before the break of (lav —-when weather permitted the planet Venus shining iu all its glorious splendour. The peerless "Venus, the planet of love,” is such a brilliant spectacle in the sky that it must attract the attention even of the most casual observer of the wonders of the heavens. Venus has a mean diameter of 7700 miles, as compared with the earth's 79.1 S miles; that is to say, the earth is 21S miles more through than Venus. Venus is approximately 67,000,000 million miles away from the sun, and her year lasts 22+ days, against the earth’s 36-3 days. The disc of Venus is not telescopically interesting, for owing to her dense cloud-laden atmosphere very few markings are visible, and this renders a determination of her axial rotation uncertain. By some astronomers her day is believed to be very nearly equal to that of the Earth, whilst others have concluded that it is equal to .the year of Venus, or, in other words, that the planet always presents the same face to the sun. Venus has epochs of great brilliancy when she appears as a beautiful crescent, like the Moon when about five days from New.

MORNING- AND EVENING STAR. Venus is both a morning and an evening star. The late Sir Robert Ball describes Venus in the following words: “In the golden glory of the west a beauteous gem is seen to glitter; it is the evening star —the planet Venus. A few weeks later another beautiful sunset is seen, and now the planet is now no longer a point low down in the western glow; it has risen high about the horizon; and continues a brilliant object long after the shades of night have descended. Again a little later and Venus lias gained its full brilliancy and splendour. All the heavenly hosts—even Sirius and even • Jupiter —must pale before the splendid lustre of the Venus, the unrivalled queen of the firmament. After weeks of splendour, the height of "Venus at sunset diminishes, and its lustre begins gradually to decline. It sinks to invisibility and is forgotten by the gieat majority of mankind; but the capricious goddess has only moved from one side of the sky to the other. Ere the sun rises the morning star will be seen in the east.” It is Venus as a morning star that we now see. The planet gradually gets closer to the sun. The watcher 6f the skies loses sight of it, and it disappears for some months, turning up eventually as an evening star in the west. * * * * HAS NO MOON. . Unlike the earth and tile other planets, Venus has no moon. At one time there were observers who declared that they had seen a moon belonging to Venus, but astronomers long ago agreed that Venus had no moon. 'The earth, as we know, has one moon. Mars has two moons, Jupiter five, Saturn eight, Ura-

Venus the Beautiful.

Is it inhabited ?

uus four, and Neptune one. The path of Venus lies inside that of the earth, and our neighbour travels quicker than we do. Consequently there arc times when Vnus passes the earth. Sometimes the earth, Venus and the sun are in a straight line; the planet appears on the face of the sun, and this is called the transit of Venus. Every year and seven months the earth is passed by Venus, and it would naturally be concluded by the layman that such transits would b e fairly frequent. Such, however, is not the case, the reason being that the path of the planet is inclined to the plane of the earth’s orbit, and to quote the late Sir Robert Ball again, “for half of its path Venus is above the plane of the earth s orbit, and in the other half it is below.

If it should happen that Venus overtakes the earth at or near either of the points in which the plane of the orbit of Venus passes through that of the earth, then thci three bodies will be in a line, and a transit of Venus will be the consequence.” The next transit of Venus will not occur till 2004, followed by one in 2012, which, needless to say, will cause no concern to, or interest among, the present generation. The last transit occurred _in ISB2 and the previous one in 1874. One lias to go back over 100 years —to 1769 —to find the next one.

* * * » IS VENDS INHABITED? The question of whether or not Venus is inhabited lias caused considerable discussion among both professional and amateur astronomers. In his work, “The Worlds of Space,” the late Mr J. Ellard Gore states that he believes that Venus is the planet most likely to be inhabited by intelligent beings.' He considers, however, that life is'not so far advanced as on earth. He expresses the opinion that the sun is cooling down, and that in the course of ages life will die out on our planet, and that Venus will probably form the theatre of life. He considers that, later still in the march of time, life will die out on Venus also, and then Mercury (the planet, nearest to the sun) will become cool enough—even at the centre of its sunlit side —to be inhabited by animal life. We know that the diameter, surface, volume and mass if Venus do not differ very much from those of the earth. Venus is probably formed of the same elements as the earth, but there is a _ mystery surrounding the planet which we have yet to solve. As Camille Flammarion (the famous French astronomer, who was born _ at Montigny-le-Roi on February 25th, 1542) says: “When w e contemplate the radiant Venus it is difficult, even if we cannot form any definite idea as to her actual state as regards habitation, to assume that she must be a dreary desert, and not, on the contrary, to hail in her a celestial land, differing more or less from our own dwelling place, moving with her sisters in the accomplishment of the general plan of nature.” —8.1.